XXX - Snowy Shaw'z New Glam Slam! Page 3
by Martin Popoff

OK, but what is it like recording with him?

"Pain in the ass, just like I think some people would say about me. I guess it's the same story with every artist who has a vision and won't give up 'til you've realized or come as close as you possibly can to that vision."

Did you get along with, or cope with, the Satanism aspect of his world?

"I don't care about that crap, but King and I got along exceptionally good. I think according to Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible and what it says about the Satanic philosophy and how one should be... I am a Satanist. But I just call it common sense."

Asked about his break with Mercyful Fate, Snowy says, "To make a long story short, I wasn't happy. After we had headlined the Roskilde Festival in Denmark 1994 in front of 70,000 people and I got off stage feeling somewhat indifferent, like I had just finished another day's work, I realized something is terribly f**king wrong here! I should have felt over-excited or on top of the world, but that was unfortunately not the case. I wasn't really allowed to contribute much in Mercyful Fate, and for a long time I had felt like I had been putting a lid on a volcano of creativity. I wanted to express myself and create and write my own music and so on. Otherwise I would have stopped music completely. Anyway, it wasn't until later in the fall when I got information about a big European tour coming up that I decided, 'That's it.'"

"I have high hopes and XXX Large plans for XXX," chuckles Shaw in conclusion. "As for Notre Dame, I nailed the coffin shut four years ago, which in retrospect seem like a quite stupid and rash decision - I could just have taken a break for an undetermined future. But f**k that now - viva la glam!"

For more on XXX - plus song samples, including the band's cover of Cheap Trick's 'I Want You To Want Me' - see www.myspace.com/xxxsweden.